As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
As processors, graphics cards, random access memory (RAM) and other components in information handling systems have increased in clock speed and power consumption, the amount of heat produced by such components as a side-effect of normal operation has also increased. Often, the temperatures of these components need to be kept within a reasonable range to prevent overheating, instability, malfunction and damage leading to a shortened component lifespan. Accordingly, air movers (e.g., cooling fans and blowers) have often been used in information handling systems to cool information handling systems and their components.
In existing information handling systems, there is typically no mechanism available for embedded controllers or a basic input/output system to proactively deliver messages regarding statuses of air movers (e.g., fans, blowers) to an operating system during runtime of the operating system. For example, when an air mover failure occurs, an automatic shutdown may occur to prevent component damage from overheating. However, a user is typically not notified of such failure when it occurs, and instead may not learn of such until a subsequent boot of the information handling system when the basic input/output system reports a fan failure during power on/self test. In order for the operating system to have any awareness of a fan failure during runtime, a management application would need to regularly poll the basic input/output system, which may not be an effective solution as it may require the use of interrupts, which may negatively affect information handling system performance.